GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 343197
disks-manager wrongly reports DVD drive as CD-ROM
Last modified: 2008-01-07 23:58:41 UTC
That bug has been opened on https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/gnome-system-tools/+bug/44436 "I have a DVD burner that is wrongly reported as a CD-ROM drive, although disks-manager detects its ability to read/write DVSs. The icon and description are identical to those of a CD drive, which is misleading and may be interpreted as missing functionality for other applications. I am attaching a snapshot of the window. The icon and description should clearly state this is a DVD writer device, although I guess this open some discussion about the many different kinds of DVD writers out there. ... http://librarian.launchpad.net/2614189/disk-manager.png disk-manager snapshot"
I am the original reporter. I thought I may add some background information here. It's still not clear to me if this is a fundamental hardware detection problem or a simple labeling mistake. Most new computers are equiped with DVD-ROM or DVD-R/W drives. The increasing amount of data people are storing means more people are getting DVD-R/W drives because they can now easily and cheaply take digital pictures and video, and digitize existing movies and audio, plus store their music and they wish to backup this data. This application is often used to mount Windows partitions because of its simplicity and intuitive interface. Many new users that are more comfortable in the GUI environment and particularly Gnome are going to be using this kind of application to verify/check what hardware they have. Although the properties of the drive are right, it is still labeled as a CD-ROM drive, which is perceived as a mistake that is so obvious, overall reliability to handle this "new" media will be questioned. In new installs I have been showing how to access Windows partitions and people notice the DVD driver wrongly identified as CD-ROM and ask "if this simple device can't be identified correctly, how can I trust my data to this OS" ? It is difficult to explain how the right description of features and the wrong label for the device coexist and have gone overseen for some time. I personally understand and can live with this kind of interface problem (as opposed to functionality - all my DVD-burning apps work well), but I really think it needs to be fixed. If I can provide any other information to help this progress, I'd love to do that.
Mass closing of remaining disks-admin and boot-admin bugs, sorry for the spam. Both tools are bitrotting, and no development is likely to happen on them.